


Chased

by siren_call



Category: Fallen Hero Series - Malin Rydén, Fallen Hero: Rebirth (Video Game)
Genre: Blood, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Pre-sidestep, spoilers for retribution
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-10
Updated: 2020-01-10
Packaged: 2021-02-27 08:15:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 663
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22183921
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/siren_call/pseuds/siren_call
Summary: You have to make a choice
Comments: 2
Kudos: 17





	Chased

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote and uploaded this in some kind of fever dream so this isn't proofread by anyone that knows what theyre doing.
> 
> [First time uploading anything here so if i didnt tag this appropriately i would appreciate it if you let me know.]

The tap is running and you haven't shut it off. Your hands, trembling from the strength of their grip on the counter top, mean that you can't. You stand head bowed over the sink watching the hot blood from your nose mingle with the cool water. You want to follow it down. Turn small and go down into the dark pipe and escape from this grimey gas station bathroom.

You have to make a choice.

The door rattles again, not long and they will be through, metal pipe through the door handle or not. The numbers they took mean that your own attempts to ram through the doors of their minds are fruitless. But you can see them through the eyes of the cashier half hidden behind the staff only door.

Five, dressed in the black tactical uniforms of the special directive. Two hold the ram, one against the wall by the fractured handle and two guns raised aimed at the height of your head.

You don't know which one shot you in the arm and you don't know which one is attached to the fingers you broke. They aren't there when you reach with your mind, just empty space, like smoke.

Is this what you seem to them, hollow? empty?

_Are you?_

There is a way out of this hell that is the small window up high and if you could reach it, you could survive this. You raise your head to look at the folding knife beside the tap. There is also a way out of this hell if you use that knife to open up and pour yourself down the sink. Enough of yourself to matter, but you won't survive it.

_Do you want to?_

You look at your arms in the mirror, bare, and follow the orange lines up past the half stitched wound on your upper arm, skirting the sharp repetitive lines on your chest, to your eyes.

 _You won't find answers here_ , they say and your eyes blur, you blink and tears roll down your face and suddenly you are so angry that you shake with it.

Angry at what you are and what you will never be. At what they have taken from you, and what they want to take still. And you want desperately to take something for yourself.

And you had it in your hands, the same hands white knuckling the sink. The first thing you ever took for yourself, freedom.

In the quiet corner of your mind that you built. In the stolen motorcycle under your hands as you flew across the moonlit nevada desert.

And they want to break the door down and take it back, take away the rest of you. You won't survive going back, you won't survive this room.

The last way out of this hell is where you take from them instead, but they won't survive it.

_Do you want them to?_

They never asked what you wanted but you know what they want, it's running from your nose and hitting creamy porcelain. Perhaps it's better this way then. Better that you are numb to them, they're just smoke, perhaps that will make it easier?

No it wont. But you don't want to die you want to live, you've only just started feeling and you want to feel something other than terror, than being hunted. Your blood keeps slipping down the drain and your lip trembles as you choke back whatever is lurking in your throat and you stare yourself down in the dirty bathroom mirror at a gas station in the middle of nowhere and _you want to live_.

You have to make a choice.

The metal pipe bends but holds from another hit.

Your jaw sets, and your arms stop trembling and you watch yourself decide. You chose to keep your crushing grip on your precious freedom even if your hands turn red from it.

You're not sure who will survive this.

The door explodes inward.


End file.
